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Pace on Forerunner 235

Hi

I recently purchased the Forerunner 235 and love it so far. My question what does the Pace really measuring/telling us? What I mean is it measuring my pace realtime at the moment, my pace for the current lap/segment or my pace throughtout the entire current event? Any information would be awesome. Thanks!

0 ASmugDill over 9 years ago

My question what does the Pace really measuring/telling us?

An approximation of the user's instantaneous pace. I don't know if the FR235 performs any smoothing of the data over multiple consecutive recording intervals, but the idea would be that if you have enabled one-second data recording, and according to the GPS data your physical displacement was 5.0 metres between the readings at (t+1) and (t+2) seconds respectively, then your Speed was 18.0‑km/h and your Pace was 3'20" per km (for that one-second interval).

What I mean is it measuring my pace realtime at the moment, my pace for the current lap/segment or my pace throughtout the entire current event?

Those would be the Lap Pace and Average Pace respectively, which are separate data fields from Pace.

0 FlipStone over 9 years ago

Hi

I recently purchased the Forerunner 235 and love it so far. My question what does the Pace really measuring/telling us? What I mean is it measuring my pace realtime at the moment, my pace for the current lap/segment or my pace throughtout the entire current event? Any information would be awesome. Thanks!

Realtime pace is an illusion and pretty useless (in my experience at least)... But I think pace is indeed an estimation of your current (realtime) pace. But due to the accuracy, or lack of it, of GPS which has a few metres of error it is pretty much impossible to obtain an accurate current pace. It will need a few seconds of data to be able to kinda reliably determine your pace... so changes in your pace will take some time to adjust and show on the watch.

0 R_Tellis over 9 years ago

As Flipstone said, it's real time but jumps around a lot. Using lap pace smoothes it out but it's just an average over the last 1km/1mi depending on your settings.

There's an IQ field available that I find very useful called Configurable Pace that allows you to set it to display an average pace over the last 'x' number of seconds. I think the range is something like 5-300 seconds. I use 30 seconds and find that to be the perfect compromise between instant pace and lap pace.

0 rocourteau over 9 years ago

By default the Pace field display some kind of an instantaneous pace; all GPS watches have similar challenges with this, since you want it to be responsive, smooth and accurate at the same time (kind of like wanting a bike to be light, cheap and durable). You can 'see' the algorithm at work when you turn a 90deg corner, and the pace jumps up temporarily; it probably takes the distance between current position and position a few seconds behind, calculates straight-line distance, divides by time, and smooths it. So going in a straight line is better than turns, constant speed is better than acceleration (hence the difficulties of using pace in short intervals), good GPS reception is better than in a forest, higher speed is better than lower (GPS pace works pretty good on a bike, for example), etc. I've had an FR 305, a 610, a 230 and an Edge 25, and they all behave the same.

The best compromise is to display the current lap pace along with the instantaneous value, and glance often at the 2 values; configurable fields are also probably a good idea (although I'd be interested to know how these deal with the 'turn syndrome' described above). Or of course you could run a lot faster, it will be more stable...

0 NickMN over 9 years ago

I agree the 'Configureable Pace' Field is a great free download on the Store. Priceless. I have also found 25-30seconds just about perfect for 'current pace' tried 7-10sconds... but still was getting up/down swings at a fairly constant pace.

Irks me a bit that all of these apps/fields...etc are not just native to the watches software... 'instant pace' on watches has always been erratic or watch specific since the dawn of GPS watches (good or bad)! Why on a robust smart watch would you not make something like that adjustable to appease many users (like the smart vs 1sec interval recording)? As a controls engineer - always makes sense in programming to make settings/set-points a variable/numeric NOT...a hard coded number. That way they are easily adjusted or tuned from a GUI , tool, menu, or at the top of code in a variables declarations/setup section... Somewhat a Software Development standard from what I remember from Computer Sci classes in college....

0 ASmugDill over 9 years ago

Why on a robust smart watch would you not make something like that adjustable to appease many users (like the smart vs 1sec interval recording)?

Because appeasement is not the name of the game, especially where not offering certain user-configurable settings in that regard (or more choice and control in a general sense) does not deter consumers from buying the product or affect sales performance in any material way.

As a controls engineer - always makes sense in programming to make settings/set-points a variable/numeric NOT...a hard coded number.

Reporting the average pace and/or speed over:

a (single!) recording interval;
a lap; and
an activity

are three logically distinct things. There is no particular reason to make these more generically/flexibly over:

[FONT=Times New Roman]N

[FONT=Times New Roman]N

[FONT=Times New Roman]N

consecutively and allow the user to specify [FONT=Times New Roman]N[/FONT] in each case, from an operational sufficiency perspective. For all we know, it may actually be a parameter in the application code as opposed to a hard-coded numeric literal of 1; the question is whether there is a technical and/or commercial need for the software producer to visibly offer users a choice.

0 chunkywizard over 9 years ago

I wasn't going to put it exact that that but he's right. There is already a number of ways to measure pace (which looks at posts on the forum already confuse people). More configurability causes more confusion and more burden on tech support. I think the current situation is fine, especially when it can be enhanced by CIQ data fields

CW

0 timgrose over 9 years ago

Interestingly the very first Forerunners did offer 4 levels of custom pace filtering but it was never that satisfactory and I think it is much better now that you just get on and run. Anyway with lap pace together with current pace I rarely find I don't know what sort of pace I am doing. As stated if this does not work for you, there are CIQ apps with different pace filters.

Another factor is that unless you are running on a completely flat and straight course with consistent underfoot terrain and wind your actual "current pace" is going to jump around anyway so I would prefer some sort of filtering/smoothing anyway.

0 SAMONZEWEB over 9 years ago

Is it possible to have a better instant pace with a footpod ?

It seems to be ok to have this with a Fenix3 (and still have all other data from GPS, not like running indoor) ?

0 R_Tellis over 9 years ago

If you're only talking about indoor runs then yes. This watch doesn't do pace from foot pod outdoors though, but will use the pod for cadence.